Letters for December, 2008

The Deadly Jester is indeed alive and well and his audience is not “too busy laughing at him to hear him” but rather very active in fabricating apologies for terrorism and organising the “red-brown-green front” of right, leftwing and islamist resentiments against liberal democracy, supplying them with postmodern drivel and pseudo-intellectual sophistry (quite similar to the casuistry of the Jesuits btw.!) to continue their stultification of civil society.

I note that all the arguments given in support relate to Sharia law; however, the claim is made against all religious law (and arbitration tribunals). Thus I must ask: is this a rational extension of the case?

Re the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial: A difference can easily be statistically significant and “virtually” within a test’s margin of error. It’s a question of sample size. Surely the question, though, is not whether the experimental “lifestyle” reduced PSA, but whether the costs of undertaking it are worth any reduction in the actual rate of prostate cancer. If it does reduce the rate, then the utopianism of the lifestyle is irrelevant. And if it doesn’t reduce the rate, it’s still irrelevant. Semmelweiss’s handwashing ideas seem to have appeared utopian to his colleagues.

Thank you for publishing this article. The points made seem to be blindingly obvious and I agree with them most heartily.

The mystery for me is why so many people in the modern world, with the benefit of education and technology, still take the sort of tripe contained in the so-called holy books seriously. And why there is an ‘academic’ discipline called theology in so many of our universities.

Analysis of the kind offered by Edward Standing must make it very hard for any sensible person to affirm his belief in the gospels, the bible or the koran or other tracts of that nature

I am leaving a comment regarding Einstein’s Wife’s contribution to the famous theories attributed totally to him alone. However – after reading the other letters here I feel it would be a waste of time.

Men are simply ignorant to the true nature of the world… to the way the Universe works – now proven ever more by recent scientific discovery – that the Universe is based on Feminine Principles rather than masculine. True intelligence should admire the value of women as their amazing talents and intelligence is LOST amongst the endless destructive wars based on the competitive nature of men who seem to enjoy doing each other in by force. Are men so insecure?

I wish people would stop doing this. Let’s suppose we could find out that there was a man named Jesus. Is there any likelihood that we will find any evidence as to what he said? People have been over this ground for so long, and for what? What would it prove if Jesus existed, and said all the things he is recorded in all the gospels and apocryphal gospels as saying? That this man existed and said a lot of inconsistent things. Or we attempt, a la Dominic Crossan, to tot up the list of likely sayings. What is the result? Another scholar’s opinion of what Jesus may have said, what his mission or purpose in life may have been. Or it may not. The only reason to do this kind of thing is because it’s religiously important, and surely CFI does not think this. It’s really a bit tiresome. There are more important things to do.

The murderer has not been identified. I wonder how many people think that the perpetrator of this hideous crime was motivated by his political strive for democracy, federalism, pluralism, seularism and intellectual freedom. Imperealistic opressors of that kind are, as is well known in the western world. ready to go to any lengths to promote their goals.

The Muslim Public Affairs Commitee (MPACUK) is appealing to its supporters to track down the Muslim researchers who worked with the think tank Policy Exchange on a project to expose the sale of hate literature in British mosques.

Under the heading “The Hunt for 8 Sufi Zio-Con Frauds”, the MPAC website claims that the researchers were members of “Sufi underground cults” who teamed up with the Zionists to discredit Islam. And it adds:

Who are they, what are their backgrounds … MPACUK will dig deeper and expose every last detail of the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community.

Sounds like MPACUK is publicly denouncing these Muslims of apostasy — and we all know what happens to apostates in Islam.

If you know who they are – please write in and we will expose these men and women for all the Muslim community to see. Write in now and let us do what the incompetent idiots in the Mosque should be doing, protecting our community.

Let us do what, precisely? I wonder if this sinister announcement of a manhunt will persuade the BBC to stop sucking up to MPAC, whose spokesman Ashgar Bukhari says that any Muslim killed fighting Israel goes straight to paradise. Probably not.[…]

What we have here is a threatening post on the MPAC official website which is apparently encouraging someone to dispense Islamic justice to Muslim traitors. “Protecting our community”, MPAC calls it. That’s a handy little euphemism, isn’t it?

To Susan Haack Intelligent design [ID] simply argues that the order and design in the universe is self evident and that the entities in it not endowed with intelligence must necessarily be directed to their ends by an intelligent agent who all men call God.

This is the teleological proof for the existence of God. It is not a theory,hypothesis,opinion,or matter of faith.

It is a scientific proof because it is a reasoned fact making no use of the Bible and because we acquire this knowledge through causality.

Consequently Judge Jones is wrong in calling ID a theory. But even if it were a theory it explains the cause of the order and design and it predicts that everything in the universe is designed for an end and purpose and has both order and design.

Religion is the worship given to a divine being.

How does ID do this? Well it doesn’t establish any religion at all obviously. Consequently the evolution disclaimer does not in any way advance religion.

Creationism implies the existence of a God. To create means to make something from nothing. The world could be eternal since God could create from all eternity or it could be created in time. Arguments from both sides are inconclusive. This is not using the Bible of course.

How do these arguments establish a religion? They obviously don’t.

Darwinism neither explains nor predicts. It is at best an hypothesis because there is no evidence-certainly not the fossil record. Darwinism claims that one thing can change into another totally different thing spontaneously or that change into another thing is by gradual or rapid process. Both of these are impossible.Hence there is no wrong in refusing to teach something for which there is not a shred of evidence.

As far as Hume goes he said on his death bed that he didn’t believe a thing he had written. And Darwin himself tried to late to stop the printing of The Origin of the Species.

As a professor of philosophy you well know that these issues can be discussed and argued without any recourse to religion whatsoever.

There is no first amendment issues either.

The courts and the ACLU obviously think or believe that God exists since they are the ones bringing up the issue.How is there entanglement of the state with religion?

ID and creationism do not teach religion obviously.The proof that God exists-how does that establish a religion?

If evolution can be taught to schoolchildren then so can ID.

All one has to do is look around to see the self evidence of design.

You are right about one thing-how God did it all will always be a mystery.